This item is new, in box.From Catalinbread:The Bitters is a reimagining of a hyper-deranged multifx processor, the Alesis Bitrman. Featuring knobs for Distortion, Phaser and one of four choosable sound manglers, you can dial in everything from a lush chorus to a crushing barrage of noise. A handy Mix control reins in the mayhem, making for a unique soundscaping tool perfect for the pedalboard or mixing desk.In 2004, the Alesis company released a series of effects geared towards tabletop musicians and DJs. This series was called "ModFX" and featured seven relatively pedestrian effect types, including vocoder, tremolo, compression, phaser, flanger, and filter. The seventh one, however, was a beast all its own among its ModFX peers and pedals in general. It is called the Bitrman. Our Bitters distills the madness of this circuit, fixing up the original's shortcomings and trimming the fat to deliver an infinitely more usable version. Occupying the darkest corner of the soundscaping realm, the Bitters will give you lush, usable effects or completely render your signal into a puddle of digital mess. Just like the original, the Bitters pairs just as well with synths, drum machines, and DAWs as it does with electric guitar and bass. The Bitters is essentially a multi-effects device on steroids, giving you individual knobs for distortion and phaser, along with a third user-selectable program called "Bitters." This program can be one of four different effects: Decimator, Bitcrusher, Frequency Modulation, and Ring Modulation. These three effects are run in series, but you can reverse the order such that Bitters comes first for some complete sonic mayhem.ControlsDISTORT: Imparts a tastefully appointed and harmonically-rich digital distortion whose gain increases as the knob is turned up. When all the way down, the distortion circuit is removed from the signal path.MIX: The Mix control lets you blend your pre-Bitters signal in with the output of the Bitters. Turn the control all the way down to hear just your dry signal, turn all the way up for full wet.BITTERS: The function of this knob is mode dependent, and you can select one of four different programs. Turning this knob to zero removes it from the signal path.DUAL: Turning this up increases the speed of a deep sine-wave phase shifter. This Phaser ranges from slow and syrupy to a lightning fast 20Hz. Turning this knob down decreases the rate to 0Hz, which puts the phaser out of the circuit.Program WheelEach program is listed twice, letting you select the order in which these effects occur in the signal path.DECIMATOR: Sample rate reduction. It samples your input signal and lowers that sample rate, which introduces Nyquist aliasing.BITCRUSHER: This reduces the fidelity of the input signal all the way down to one bit for some true digital destruction, with a noise gate to keep it in check.FREQUENCY MODULATION: Otherwise known as pitch vibrato, you can dial it down to a subtle warble (and use the mix control to get a killer chorus sound) or let it rip.RING MODULATOR: A tremolo with an extremely fast modulation, introducing additive and subtractive frequencies relative to the input signal and the carrier frequency.Power SupplyThe Bitters accepts a center-negative DC power supply from 9 to 18 volts.
